Ex-banker gets 41 months for raiding $133,000 from customers

A former Wells Fargo Bank employee was sentenced Thursday to 41 months in federal prison for his part in raiding more than $133,000 from customers' accounts.

Rogelio Rodriguez, a personal banker, apologized for his role in the fraud at the bank's Las Palmas branch on the West Side.

He and two other then-employees, including ringleader Yadira M. Ybarra, stole the money between April and July 2009 — though they tried to get $225,680 before the theft was discovered.

“If I knew what was going on, I wouldn't have done it,” Rodriguez told U.S. District Judge Orlando Garcia. “I trusted someone I shouldn't have.”

Garcia postponed Thursday's sentencing for Ybarra, who also faces sentencing for her role in an unrelated case in which she admitted trying to buy machine guns.

Last year, the judge sentenced three accomplices, a bank employee and two nonemployees, to prison terms of up to 33 months.

Ybarra and Rodriguez forged signatures of account holders on withdrawal slips and used the customers' identifying information to withdraw money from their accounts.

In some cases, deposits were diverted from business customers into the accounts the defendants created.

Separately, Ybarra also pleaded guilty to possessing a machine gun.

She admitted she was caught in a Sears parking lot in San Antonio trying to buy four machine guns and six assault rifles from people she thought were gun traffickers. The March 2011 deal turned out to be a sting operation by agents with the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.